Informal Labor in the Sharing Economy: Everyone Can Be a Record Producer

The availability of Digital Audio
Workstations (DAWs) – digital software that allows musicians and producers to
record music on a computer – changes the social relations of production in the
studio. Much as digital music stores helped to close bricks-and-mortar music
stores (Arditi
2014c), cheap DAWs have made large record studios increasingly obsolete. The
informality of digital media does not end with distribution and consumption,
but extends to labor in the production of digital culture. With digital
technology, everyone can be a record producer, but even fewer people can make a
living from record production.

Sharing is fundamental to
rhetorical discussions of the Internet. Jonas Andersson Schwarz claims
“‘Sharing’ has become one of the most telling pastimes of our digital,
networked age” (Andersson
Schwarz 2013:1). There are four uses of the term “sharing” as relates to the
Internet. First, we can talk about file sharing and the gift economy. Matthew
David claims that file sharing has “the potential to circulate [informational]
goods freely through the Internet,” which he contends could lead to the end of
scarcity of informational goods (2010:2).
Proponents of file sharing claim “information wants to be free.” Of course, the
Culture Industry sees file sharing as a threat to their monopoly on cultural
commodities. Second, there is the idea of sharing one’s ideas, thoughts,
pictures, and daily routines with others through social media. Ben Agger labels
this narcissistic tendency “oversharing” as we begin to put our every detail on
the Internet for everyone to see (2011).
What was once private has become public as we share likes, dislikes, secrets,
and obsessions to everyone on the Internet. Third, sharing is a code word for Internet
corporations with regard to what they do with our data. In this case “sharing”
is a substitute for “selling” that intentionally obscures our understanding of
sharing in the first two senses (Fuchs
2013).

Fourth, a sharing economy implies
an informal economy where people sell the use of things they own. As Juliet
Schor defines “the new sharing economy as economic activity that is
Peer-to-Peer, or person-to-person, facilitated by digital platforms” (2015).
Platforms place people in contact with each other to “share” goods and time.
Advocates of the sharing economy claim that these platforms make under-utilized
goods productive. In effect, “sharing” is selling the usage rights to an owned
commodity. However, sharing could be viewed as unending labor—a type of labor
power dependent on the constant work of individuals under precarious
circumstances. These workers “have no protections—not even minimum wage
guarantees—when payment is by the job, rather than by time” (Schor
2015). From Uber and Airbnb to Favor and Rent Like a Champion, mobile devices
have become tools for the informalization of labor – a process where companies
describe themselves as web-platforms instead of cab companies, delivery
services or hotels. In effect, the workers own their means of production, but
the tech companies use their brand power to connect workers to customers. It is
in the fourth sense that I am exploring the way record producers become
“sharing” entrepreneurs whereby they sell access to their studios.

The social relations of
production in recording studios changes as musicians and labels stop using
large recording studios. Record production has been scattered through a number
of smaller craft studios, which fundamentally changes the work environment for
people working in studios. The prospect of full time employment in large
studios has always been a challenge, and studio workers are known to labor
precariously to earn a living; however, DAWs have rapidly increased this
precariousness over the last several decades. Many of these workers live
job-to-job or toil in part-time positions in other industries hoping to catch a
break with their music production career. This new form of production gives
corporations a means to increase capital by cutting production budgets.

The digital transition of
recording studios is not the logical outcome of the progress of technology, but
rather a product of the logic of capitalism. A raw technological determinism
assumes that technology is devoid of ideology and that the creation of new
technology can only mark progress that advances society and humanity. However,
it is important to remember that technological development is embedded within a
particular set of social relations. In Noise: The Political Economy of Music
(1985),
Jacques Attali proposes that the political economy of music predicts or
foreshadows shifts in the economic system. For instance, workers in the sharing
economy have been described a “turn toward precarious employment and the
privatization of risk . . . more accurately understood as the ‘1099 economy,’
since their workers are not employees receiving IRS W-2 forms, but 1099-MISC
forms. That is they are temporary contractors” (Walker
2015). Musicians have worked as temporary contractors filing 1099 tax forms for
decades whether they are gigging musicians, session musicians, or signed to a
record contract. The sharing economy models itself on the informal labor
structure under which musicians have been oppressed. With regard to record
production, there is a remarkable similarity between the displacement of studio
production from large label studios to small project (typically home) studios
and the overall shift from large corporate owned services to the sharing
economy.

While the informalization of
labor in the production of music is not necessarily linked to an online
platform that operates under the guise of sharing, there are distinct
similarities to the precarity of labor that occurs with digitization. This essay
outlines the changes to the recording studio, then critiques these changes in
terms of their influence on the conditions of labor. I conclude by discussing
the website platform, SoundBetter—a site designed to connect musicians and
music production workers to record music. I use a Cultural Studies methodology
that interrogates a cultural object (music studios) with the goal of
illuminating the situatedness of that object within a broader social discourse.
To do this, I employ the method of immanent critique as “a means of detecting
the societal contradictions which offer the most determinate possibilities for
emancipatory social change” (Antonio
1981:330). What follows is a theorization of the effects of digital music
production on the social relations of production in new studio spaces.

Digitizing and Decentering the Studio

As large studios developed in a
handful of major cities, other studios clustered nearby to exploit the
available labor. Allen Scott contends that this “clustering together of many
different types of firms and specialized workers in one place provides all
participants in the industry with a form of social insurance in the sense that
clustering will almost always guarantee a relatively high probability of
finding just the right kind of input within easy access at just the right time”
(Scott
2000:121). In other words, record labels and musicians cluster in New York, Los
Angeles, and Nashville because there are already musicians in those locations.[2] Clustering creates
easy access to a pool of qualified musicians, producers, engineers, Artist
& Repertoire (A&R) staff, and composers. With all of these different
types of labor near each other, capitalism has an efficient system of
production because little time and resources are lost seeking out the right
types of labor to exploit; clustering creates a reserve army of labor. As a
result, record labels built studios in these key cities to exploit the cultural
labor that existed in these locations. Large record label-owned or established
studios allowed capital to expropriate labor at a high profit; however, DAWs
are upending the institutional need for these large studios and replacing them
with smaller decentralized studios.

Large studios operate under a
Fordist economic model. Their goal is to produce a large quantity of music with
nominal costs. The most effective strategy to produce music was to develop an
economy of scale. Berry Gordy perfected this model in the Detroit-based Motown
Studios, 1959-1972, where composers/authors, musicians, engineers, producers,
directors worked under the same roof (Smith
2001). Gordy’s model operated through a logic where the parts were interchangeable
(Horkheimer
and Adorno 1972); a song written by Holland-Dozier-Holland (a Motown
songwriting team) could be recorded by Motown session musicians, vocals could
be recorded by both Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, then ultimately Motown
management could decide which recording artist would have the song on their
album. This was possible because of the location of surplus army of musical labor
in one place.

This model was used across the
recording industry. Again, this is based on an economy of scale. If we just
consider janitorial services, one large studio that has the capacity to record
multiple sessions at the same time could employ one janitor to clean the floors
and bathrooms of a large studio, but if the studio were half the size and split
into two locations, two janitors would be needed to keep the studio clean. I
mention janitors because this is how deeply embedded labor is in these studios.
On the production level, a team of sound engineers in a large studio allows an
engineer to set-up a session in one room while recording is taking place in a
different room. Their labor is always necessary around the studio on a rotating
basis to keep projects moving through the studio. While the clustering of labels
in specific cities allowed for the grouping together of various types of labor
across the recording industry (Scott
2000), these studios allowed for fewer workers on a larger scale.

Since analog recording equipment was
so expensive, recording studios required significant capital to open; this
meant that record labels were ideal owners of studios. Recording studios have
been the main element of the means of production in the recording industry
because instruments and other performance gear is relatively cheap. Therefore,
record labels owned recording studios as a means to employ various types of
labor to produce music. The reason why musicians recorded in these large
studios was simple: musicians did not have the capital to own the means of
production to record music. If musicians wanted to record and sell music, they
had to pay for time in a studio. Ownership of the means of production is so
important to capitalism because it is what allows capital to exploit labor.
Since labor cannot afford to produce records on their own, they need to work
for capital. However, all of this changes with DAWs because of the diminution
of the cost of recording equipment. This decline in the cost of recording
equipment has led to the closing of recording studios.

For example, the closure of Room
With A View studios illustrates the expense to run a high-end recording studio.
Billboard closely followed the development of Room With A View studios
going as far as to consider this small one-room facility “one of the top mixing
facilities in the world” used by recording artists such as Dave Matthews Band,
Ozzy Osbourne, Paula Cole and The Verve Pipe (Verna
1997). The excitement around the studio, which opened in 1994, stemmed from the
studio’s purchase of a Solid State Logic (SSL) 9000 J series console, a
recording console that cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” (Verna
1997). Slightly over a year later in 1998, Paul Verna reported a story about
the closure of Room With A View. In this later story, former studio owner
Alessandro Cecconi stated the following:

“When we got our 9000, there were three in town,” he says. “Now there are eight or nine, and SSL is dropping their prices, so the studios are dropping their rates. You can get an 80-channel board for $400,000. As a studio owner, you never win. You put in a 9000 and you sell your room for $2,000 a day. Then the next guy puts one in and charges $1,800 a day. Then the next guy charges $1,600”(Verna 1998a).

This illustrates the high cost of
high-end recording studios. Cecconi attempted to create a high-end recording
studio on a small-scale to compete with the large multi-room studios run by the
major record labels. While Cecconi blames the cost of SSL for his studio’s
failure, a point that SSL vehemently denies (Verna
1998b), this episode exemplifies the barrier for small studios to purchase the
means of production to compete on equal ground with the majors. For a major
record label or an established multi-room studio, a $400,000 piece of equipment
is an investment in a business that can be made by reinvesting capital, whereas,
Room With A View undoubtedly received a loan to purchase the equipment that
would ultimately have to be paid off with more expensive studio time. This
initial difference in capital reflects the capacity for different types of
studios to charge different daily rates; large concentrated firms will always
be able to stifle the competition similar to the effects of Walmart on small
businesses in the retail industry. And yet, it is an irony that Room With A
View made an attempt to compete with large studios by purchasing an expensive
recording console at a time when expensive recording equipment was quickly
becoming unnecessary.

A transformation to this model of
large recording studios began decades ago because studio equipment has become
less expensive, smaller, and more portable. As the smaller and cheaper
equipment has improved in quality, “the distinction between what can be
considered a ‘professional’ or ‘commercial’ project studio and simply a
‘personal’ or ‘home’ studio has become increasingly difficult to make” (Théberge
2012:83). Since high quality recording technology is available in the home that
is indistinguishable from that available in expensive studios, there has been
widespread adaptation of these technologies by musicians and producers. A
report by Billboard about the closing of Hit Factory in New York City
and Cello Studios in Los Angeles within five days in 2005 points to the fact
that music can be “completed in small, inexpensive DAW-based suites, some of
them personal or home studios” (Walsh
2005). The low cost of new recording technology has lowered the cost of the
means of production displacing the importance of large studios in the recording
process. Even Sony Studio, one of the last unionized studios in NYC was valued
“more as real estate than any amount of financial gain, organization efficiency
or corporate prestige” (Théberge
2012:78). In other words, even the organizational efficiency and corporate
inertia of large studios was no match for the increased efficiency of
outsourcing studio work to independent producers. Susan Christopherson
highlights a similar process in the film and television industries where “new
technologies have also affected content production, making it less expensive
and adapted to the demand for inexpensive programming. In particular,
light-weight video, lighting and audio equipment have made it possible to
reduce the number of people necessary for a ‘shoot’” (Christopherson
2008:79). Because cheaper production processes are available, film and
television budgets have decreased, thereby forcing producers to produce content
on smaller budgets using cheaper technologies; this is precisely the process
taking place in the recording industry.

Large studios have been closing
around the country. Mergers have been the source of some closures, such as the
A&M Recording Studios complex, which closed as a result of Universal Music
Group’s purchasing of Polygram records in 1999 (Verna
1999). In New York City, Hit Factory, famous for recording artists from Paul
Simon to Michael Jackson, closed its doors in 2005 and is now luxury condos (Rose
2009). As Billboard contends, “inexpensive, high-quality digital
recording equipment has increasingly enabled musicians to take production into
their own hands,” a trend that the recording industry’s trade journal claims to
find “troubling” in places like Austin, Texas (Walsh
2003). I highlight the word troubling because it implies a degree of conscience
on the part of Billboard; however, the overall thrust of the content in Billboard
emphasizes the profitability of major record labels. To that end, the closing
of studios in Austin, Texas signals the reduced costs for major record labels
to produce and sell albums. In fact, later in the same article (Walsh
2003), Billboard blames the closing of Austin’s studios on the declining
major label recording budgets; however, the article does not connect the
availability of cheap recording equipment with the declining budgets.

What causes the decline of major
record label recording budgets? The dominant narrative perpetuates the idea
that declining budgets are a direct result of declining music sales. As an
example, an article in the Christian Science Monitor relays the
narrative that “following the downturn in music sales this decade, many studios
are struggling or simply have closed their doors” (Guarino
2009). This articulation implies that studios are closing because of declining
music sales. However, as I have demonstrated elsewhere (Arditi
2014b, 2014c), this argument is specious because the major record labels define
this narrative. A critical analysis of the status of recording budgets points
in a different direction: the decline of the cost of the means of production
(in this instance, recording equipment and space) led to smaller budgets.
Smaller budgets are a result of the logic of capitalism. Why would a label
budget for a $2,000/day studio when it can budget for a studio that charges
$500/day? Major record labels will not spend unnecessary money on the recording
process. Because recording can be done on a small scale from small/boutique/producer-owned/home
studios, there is no longer a need for record labels’ budgets to support the
overhead cost of running a large recording studio. The new low cost of the
means of record production dislodged production by forcing the closure of large
studios and changing the space of record production to decentralized small
studios.

There are parallels to the
growing sharing economy in the ability for workers to own, at least, part of
the means of production. Uber and Lyft are known as “rideshare” services
because they allow vehicle owners to act as taxi drivers. People who own cars
can drive passengers for a fee on their “free” time. This is significantly
different from driving for a taxi cab company or limousine service where the
company owns the vehicle and the drivers are employees who need the company to
earn a wage. With ridesharing, Uber and Lyft do not own the vehicles (at least
for most of their services), but rather count on crowdsourcing drivers and
their cars throughout selected cities. Ridesharing services define themselves
as web platforms because their applications connect passengers to drivers.
NeighborGoods is a website that allows individuals to rent their tools.
CouchSurfing and Airbnb connect people willing to rent their homes to
travelers.

In each case, the company earns
revenue from workers who use their own means of production, but would lack the
cumulative network of people using these services to generate a wage from
driving or renting their own equipment. Small studios work in a similar way
where studio “owners” (people with a laptop and several microphones) can record
their own music and record the music of others, but their studios lack the
reputation to gain the recordings any recognition.

Owning a personal home studio has
become a significant part of a musician’s identity. In an ethnography of the
underground hip-hop music scene entitled “Get on the Mic: Recording Studios as
Symbolic Spaces in Rap Music” (2014),
Geoff Harkness investigates the role of studio space in rap music. In Harkness’
illustration of the symbolic spaces in which emcees record and produce their
music, I see two levels of craft production. First, Harkness describes the
studio space of National Sound, a “professional studio with enough computer
gear and digital paraphernalia to fill a small airplane hangar” (Harkness
2014:82). Second, Harkness identifies the myriad varieties of home studio
spaces. These spaces remove the centrality of capital in the recording process
because they allow for the dispersal of recording sites. However, these new
spaces more thoroughly point to the informalization of labor that is a
quintessential part of the contemporary recording industry and sharing economy
more generally.

Informalizing Labor

Before the proliferation of DAWs
and cheap recording equipment, musicians were the primary source of precarious
casual labor in the recording industry. Many musicians have an ideology that to
succeed in their craft, they need to sign a record contract, and as part of
that ideology, they earn a living by not committing themselves to a stable
career. Rather, musicians dedicate their lives to one day “making it” in the
music business by playing gigs at night and working part-time jobs or teaching
music lessons during the day. In doing so, these musicians accept whatever type
of work can permit them the flexibility to set their own schedule. Since they
see their primary source of work (i.e. being a musician) as flexible and
casual, they are willing to accept other forms of flexible and casual
employment to supplement their income (Arditi
2014a). This has been the labor model for musicians for the better part of a
century. Attali’s proclamation that the political economy of music foreshadows
the broader political economic system is relevant here because the global
economic system shifted to embrace the contingent nature of employment for
musicians for all types of labor. “Capital-owners have won lavish returns from
casualization – subcontracting, outsourcing and other modes of flexploitation –
and increasingly expect the same in higher-skill sectors of the economy. As a
result, we have seen the steady march of contingency into the lower and middle
levels of the professional and high-wage service industries” (Ross
2008:34). As Andrew Ross suggests, capital is instituting precarious labor at
all levels and in all types of labor. This has been implemented through the
language of creativity and creative workers under the argument that for workers
to be the most productive and happiest, they must be given the space to have a
flexible work environment. The non-musician labor in the recording industry is
increasingly emulating the labor conditions of musicians. While some workers
within the Culture Industry have made considerable money from flexible
outsourced label, far more make less money.

In large multi-room studios,
there are a number of labor positions necessary for the everyday functioning of
the studio. As discussed above, this labor includes everything from the
janitorial staff to sound engineers. Large studios employ these workers on a
full-time basis to ensure a smooth operating studio. Therefore, these studios
must pay employees for working full-time, which includes complying with state-mandated
benefits for full-time employees. This is the “organizational efficiency” (Théberge
2012) discussed above; because record labels owned large studios, they already
had labor within these studios. There is no need to locate workers in large
studios, and negotiate their wages because they were part of the studio. Small
studios work under a mode of production where the cost of the means of
production is shifted to labor itself.

The political economy of this scenario
is interesting because of the way the new model places the

economic burden on subcontracted labor
– an expansion of the so-called “1099 economy” discussed above. As a
hypothetical example, whereas an established studio may charge $1500–2,000/day for
the use of a studio, a small professional project studio may charge $50/hour
(or $400 for an eight-hour day). The availability of cheap digital recording
equipment is not enough to explain this decrease in price; it can only be
described in terms of a parallel reduction in labor costs. As Susan
Christopherson characterizes this process, “large media firms are paring down
their production workforces to an essential core and using temporary workers
and self-employed workers on an as-needed basis” (Christopherson
2008:83). In other words, record labels reduce the cost to produce albums by
relying on contingent labor that not only produces music at a lower cost, but
also does this by employing fewer workers. Small project studios are operated
generally by the owner who acts as owner/producer/engineer/janitor as is the
case with Abe at National Sound (Harkness
2014). Even in instances where the producer has a big name, these relations of
production require the producer to determine his/her studio’s labor
configuration to meet the demands of a budget. In other words, it is the
producer’s decision who to hire to help run the studio. Unfortunately, this has
led to both a reduction in the number of employees necessary in a production
studio and the amount that producers are willing to or required by law to pay
employees. Therefore, digital studios have led to the increasingly
precariousness of employment for workers in the recording industry.

The concept of “precariousness”
used by many Autonomist Marxists and critical media theorists is relevant to
this labor position. As labor flexibility increases, it erodes at Marx’s
concept of the reserve army of labor. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri posit
that “What is called the flexibility of the labor market means that no job is
secure” (2004:131).
Without job security, even the employed are unsure of their future employment
and many workers remain underemployed as they string together odd jobs to try
to pay bills. “Precariousness (in relation to work) refers to all forms of
insecure, contingent, flexible work – from illegalized, casualized and
temporary, to homeworking, piecework and freelancing” (Gill
and Pratt 2008:3). Whereas many economists promote creative labor as a model
for all labor, Gill and Pratt argue precisely the flexibility of so-called
“creative workers” places them in an insecure position. For instance, the two
types of new project studios, described by Harkness (2014),
allow for endless tinkering on the part of musicians, and in the professional
project studios, it overworks the staff of the studio for little pay. The
musician’s home tinkering is a form of homeworking that advances itself in
perpetuity – a musician will spend all of his/her free time working on a track
to “perfect” it, but there is no compensation for time-spent working.
Meanwhile, producers who open their own studios must always work to find
musicians to record sessions because their survival is contingent on a demand
for studio space. If their studio business is struggling to remain open, the
producer-owner must be willing to record whenever musicians would like to
record. Whereas labor in a Fordist industrial model is guaranteed a wage as
long as they remain employed, precarious employment is dependent on the whims
of demand and the insecurity of the next project.

Precarity is demonstrated
throughout the record industry. In The Death & Life of the Music
Industry in the Digital Age (2013),
Jim Rogers calls the celebrity status of particular producers the “cult” of the
record producer. Rogers suggests that “record producers now exist as individual
brands in their own right. Beyond serving to shape or define the sound of the
record, many producers, courtesy of the elevated status they have come to
enjoy, are widely perceived as fundamental to enhancing the public profile of
the artists they produce” (Rogers
2013:193).

Producers become larger than the
artists themselves. As a result, picking the right producer(s) for an album
contributes to the overall success of the album. For instance, Adele’s album 25,
which was always destined to go multi-platinum benefited directly from the cult
of the record producer. In Rolling Stone’s review of 25, the
reviewer explains that “pop’s biggest names, from Max Martin to Bruno Mars,
join familiar faces like Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder in 25’s dream team
of producers and co-writers” (Dolan
2015:61). These are producers/songwriters with the biggest hits at the time;
their names and reputations almost guarantee a hit album. Furthermore, Rogers insists
this gives lesser-known artists access to larger audiences. It is important to
note that this has little to do with production quality, and is more closely
related to the producer’s brand.

Moreover, “big-name producers are
largely only accessible through one of the major labels,” which Rogers argues
“helps to maintain and bolster an oligopolistic industrial structure” (Rogers
2013:194). Since big-name producers are available only to major label artists,
the cult of the producer leads to even greater distinctions between music
produced by majors and independents. The class divide between majors and
independents grows deeper because independent artists can only use
non-major-affiliated producers who do not have the brand-power to expose their
music to a larger audience.

To help with the recording
process, owner-producers seek even more contingent/flexible/casual labor. Many
project studios turn to interns to fill the labor gaps in their studios.
Whereas the traditional studio model used apprentices to do much of the less skilled
labor around the studio and paid sound engineers to facilitate the recording
process, today’s project studios focus on interns. In some instances, studios
open “their doors to interns for a fee, thus generating income during periods
when the studio would otherwise be unused” (Théberge
2012:88). In other words, the precariousness of project studio employment
encourages owner-producers to use further types of casualized labor and go as
far as charging them for their exploitation. Alexandre Frenette (2013)
reveals the precariousness of interns working for the major record labels. In a
way, the interns who Frenette describes at the major record labels represent a
privileged position compared to those working at project studios because the
major labels operate within the work standards of labor laws—however low those
standards are for interns. Since project studios may operate without licenses,
there may not be documentation that an individual interns at a project studio; this
increases the precariousness of the intern’s labor.

By contracting studio work to
small independent project studios, major record labels create disturbing labor
practices that exploit the disempowered character of studio owner-producers. People
that want to work in recording studios do so only in the most precarious of
labor relations. Ultimately, the most practical way to make money working in a
recording studio is for aspirant producers to build their own studios because
their work is too contingent otherwise. However, opening one’s own studio is
also a quick route to bankruptcy because the lack of contracts and competition
among producers makes owning a studio unstable. Major record labels continue to
decrease recording budgets for their recording artists because they know how
the system of outsourcing works to minimize costs. Recording artists seek out
cheaper studios to make their recording budgets go further. As a result, there
is a race to the bottom among project studio owners who are desperate to slash
their rates to compete against the always-increasing number of project studios

Conclusion

Already,
a web platform exists to find “freelancers” to record your album. SoundBetter is a website with lofty
goals to “democratize the music production world, to help pros get work
remotely, to increase transparency via verified reviews and help the huge
market of self producing musicians securely connect with the right partners
from anywhere in the world” (https://soundbetter.com/about,
February 1, 2016). By promising a “democratic” structure, SoundBetter elicits
the connotation that all are created equal. There is a free “Basic” plan that
allows producers, beatmakers, mixers, musicians, sound engineers, etc. to
create a profile and use the platform. However, there is a tiered pricing plan
for $39/month or $395/year to have greater access (which includes access to the
job board—an important feature for people who want to make a living through the
site). So in practice, SoundBetter parallels American democracy where people
with money have greater access than the poor masses. At the same time,
SoundBetter generates revenue from users regardless of whether these users
actually receive gigs. By placing people in contact with potential producers,
beatmakers and sound engineers, SoundBetter extracts profit from the dreams of
aspiring record producers without giving them much other than a central place
to be found.

Record
producers in small studios are independent contractors who rely on landing gigs
to earn an income. This essay opens lines of inquiry for future work around three
ideologies that induce producers to work in the informal economy. First,
producers succumb to the ideology of creative autonomy. Second, many producers
endlessly tinker with their music with the hope to one day “make it” and be
released from their everyday struggle. Third, producers believe that the path
to celebrity requires dedicating all of their time to their craft.

When
everyone can be a cab driver, hotelier or record producer, no one can make a
living from driving people around, renting out a room or recording music. For
example, by driving for Uber in one’s “free” time, it reduces the number of
riders available to people driving full time. Not only do people fail to make a
living from these activities, there is no solidarity between workers and no chance
of unionization. In the music industry, there are no credible data on the
number of workers – the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics has no way to track the
number of people who work as producers. While musicians have always had this
precarity, the rest of the economy is following their lead to become an economy
of 1099 workers. Virtually no one can make a living producing music, but that
does not stop the dreamers from toiling to hit it big.

Smith, Suzanne E. 2001. Dancing in the Street:
Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.

Théberge, Paul. 2012. “The End of the World as We Know
It: The Changing Role of the Studio in the Age of the Internet.” Pp. 77–90 in The
Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field,
edited by S. Frith and S. Zagorski-Thomas. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Verna, Paul. 1997. “In N.Y., a Room With A View That
Draws Top Mixers.” Billboard, June 21, 46.

Notes

[1]
This article is derived, in part, from an essay published in The production
and consumption of music in the digital age on April 26, 2016.

[2]
Of course, there are varying reasons why these cities became sites for the
recording industry. For example, Los Angeles developed as musicians from across
the United States migrated to be close to film recording (Zinn,
Kelley, and Frank 2002).